belt of firm sand which forms the border of the lake. Light-green wavescame to the shore in long lines, with a crest of foam, like a miniaturesurf, rolling in from that inland ocean, and as they dashed against thelegs of the horses, and the wheels of our carriage, the air that playedover them was exceedingly refreshing.

When we set out the following day in the stage-coach for Peru, I wassurprised to see how the settlement of Chicago had extended westward intothe open country. "Three years ago," said a traveller in the coach, "itwas thought that this prairie could neither be inhabited nor cultivated.It is so level and so little elevated, that for weeks its surface wouldremain covered with water; but we have found that as it is intersectedwith roads, the water either runs off in the ditches of the highways, oris absorbed into the sand which lies below this surface of dark vegetablemould, and it is now, as you perceive, beginning to be covered withhabitations."

If you ever go by the stage-coach from Chicago to Peru, on the Illinoisriver, do not believe the glozing tongue of the agent who tells you thatyou will make the journey in sixteen hours. Double the number, and youwill be nearer the truth. A violent rain fell in the course of themorning; the coach was heavily loaded, nine passengers within, and threewithout, besides the driver; the day was hot, and the horses dragged usslowly through the black mud, which seemed to possess the consistency andtenacity of sticking-plaster. We had a dinner of grouse, which here incertain seasons, are sold for three cents apiece, at a little tavern onthe road; we had passed the long green mound which bears the name of MountJoliet, and now, a little before sunset, having travelled somewhat lessthan fifty miles, we were about to cross the channel of the Illinois canalfor the second or third time.

There had once been a bridge at the crossing-place, but the water hadrisen in the canal, and the timbers and planks had floated away, leavingonly the stones which formed its foundation. In attempting to ford thechannel the blundering driver came too near the bridge; the coach-wheelson one side rose upon the stones, and on the other sank deep into the mud,and we were overturned in an instant. The outside passengers were pitchedhead-fore-most into the canal, and four of those within were lying underwater. We extricated ourselves as well as we could, the men waded out, thewomen were carried, and when we got on shore it was found that, althoughdrenched with water and plastered with mud, nobody was either drowned orhurt.

A farm wagon passing at the moment, forded the canal without the leastdifficulty, and taking the female passengers, conveyed them to the nextfarm-house, about a mile distant. We got out the baggage, which wascompletely soaked with water, set up the carriage on its wheels, in doingwhich we had to stand waist high in the mud and water, and reached thehospitable farm-house about half-past nine o'clock. Its owner was anemigrant from Kinderhook, on the Hudson, who claimed to be a Dutchman anda Christian, and I have no reason to doubt that he was either. His kindfamily made us free of their house, and we passed the night in dryingourselves, and getting our baggage ready to proceed the next day.

We travelled in a vehicle built after the fashion of the Englishpost-coach, set high upon springs, which is the most absurd kind ofcarriage for the roads of this country that could be devised. Thosestage-wagons which ply on Long Island, in one of which you sometimes seeabout a score of Quakers and Quakeresses, present a much better model.Besides being tumbled into the canal, we narrowly escaped being overturnedin a dozen other places, where the mud was deep or the roads uneven.

In my journey the next day, I was struck with the difference which fiveyears had made in the aspect of the country. Frame or brick houses in manyplaces had taken the places of log-cabins; the road for long distances nowpassed between fences, the broad prairie, inclosed, was turned intoimmense fields of maize, oats, and wheat, and was spotted here and therewith young orchards, or little groves, and clumps of bright-greenlocust-trees, and where the prairie remained open, it was now depasturedby large herds of cattle, its herbage shortened, and its flowers lessnumerous. The wheat harvest this year is said to have failed in northernIllinois. The rust has attacked the fields which promised the fairest, andthey are left unreaped, to feed the quails and the prairie-hens.

Another tedious day's journey, over a specially bad road, brought us toPeru a little before midnight, and we passed the rest of the night at aninn just below the bank, on the margin of the river, in listening to themosquitoes. A Massachusetts acquaintance the next morning furnished uswith a comfortable conveyance to this pleasant neighborhood.

Letter XXXIII.

Return to Chicago.

Chicago, _August_ 8, 1846.

You may be certain that in returning to this place from Princeton I didnot take the stage coach. I had no fancy for another plunge into theIllinois canal, nor for being overturned upon the prairies in one of thosevehicles which seem to be set high in the air in order they may moreeasily lose their balance. We procured a private conveyance and made thejourney in three days--three days of extreme heat, which compelled us totravel slowly. The quails, which had repaired for shade to the fences bythe side of the road, ran from them into the open fields, as we passed,with their beaks open, as if panting with the excessive heat.

The number of these birds at the present time is very great. They swarm inthe stubble fields and in the prairies, and manifest little alarm at theapproach of man. Still more numerous, it appears to me, are the grouse, orprairie-hens, as they call them here, which we frequently saw walkingleisurely, at our approach, into the grass from the road, whither theyresorted for the sake of scattered grains of oats or wheat that had fallenfrom the loaded wagons going to Chicago. At this season they are full fedand fearless, and fly heavily when they are started. We frequently sawthem feeding at a very short distance from people at work in the fields.In some neighborhoods they seem almost as numerous as fowls in apoultry-yard. A settler goes out with his gun, and in a quarter of an hourbrings in half a dozen birds which in the New York market would cost twodollars a pair. At one place where we stopped to dine, they gave us a kindof pie which seemed to me an appropriate dessert for a dinner ofprairie-hens. It was made of the fruit of the western crab-apple, and wasnot unpalatable. The wild apple of this country is a small tree growing inthickets, natural orchards. In spring it is profusely covered withlight-pink blossoms, which have the odor of violets, and at this season itis thickly hung with fruit of the color of its leaves.

Another wild fruit of the country is the plum, which grows in thickets,plum-patches, as they are called, where they are produced in greatabundance, and sometimes, I am told, of excellent quality. In a drivewhich I took the other day from Princeton to the alluvial lands of theBureau River, I passed by a declivity where the shrubs were red with thefruit, just beginning to ripen. The slope was sprinkled by them withcrimson spots, and the odor of the fruit was quite agreeable. I have eatenworse plums than these from our markets, but I hear that there is a latervariety, larger and of a yellow color, which is finer.

I spoke in my last of the change caused in the aspect of the country bycultivation. Now and then, however, you meet with views which seem to havelost nothing of their original beauty. One such we stopped to look at froman eminence in a broad prairie in Lee county, between Knox Grove andPawpaw Grove. The road passes directly over the eminence, which is roundand regular in form, with a small level on the summit, and bears the nameof the Mound. On each side the view extends to a prodigious distance; theprairies sink into basins of immense breadth and rise into swells of vastextent; dark groves stand in the light-green waste of grass, and a dimblue border, apparently of distant woods, encircles the horizon. To give apastoral air to the scene, large herds of cattle were grazing at no greatdistance from us.

I mentioned in my last letter that the wheat crop of northern Illinois haspartially failed this year. But this is not the greatest calamity whichhas befallen this part of the country. The season is uncommonly sickly. Wepassed the first night of our journey at Pawpaw Grove--so named from thenumber of pawpaw-trees which grow in it, but which here scarcely find thesummer long enough to perfect their fruit. The place has not had thereputation of being unhealthy, but now there was scarce a family in theneighborhood in which one or more was not ill with an intermittent or abilious fever. At the inn where we stopped, the landlady, a stoutPennsylvania woman, was just so far recovered as to be able, as sheinformed us, "to poke about;" and her daughter, a strapping lass, went outto pass the night at the bedside of one of the numerous sick neighbors.The sickness was ascribed by the settlers to the extremely dry and hotweather following a rainy June. At almost every place where we stopped weheard similar accounts. Pale and hollow-eyed people were lounging about."Is the place unhealthy," I asked one of them. "_I_ reckon so," heanswered; and his looks showed that he had sufficient reason. At Aurora,where we passed the second night, a busy little village, with mills andmanufactories, on the Fox River, which here rushes swiftly over a stonybed, they confessed to the fever and ague. At Naperville, pleasantlysituated among numerous groves and little prairies swelling into hills, weheard that the season was the most sickly the inhabitants had known. Here,at Chicago, which boasts, and with good reason, I believe, of its healthysite, dysenteries and bilious attacks are just now very common, withoccasional cases of fever.

It is a common remark in this country, that the first cultivation of theearth renders any neighborhood more or less unhealthy. "Nature," said awestern man to me, some years since, "resents the violence done her, andpunishes those who first break the surface of the earth with the plough."The beautiful Rock River district, with its rapid stream, its noblegroves, its banks disposed in natural terraces, with fresh springs gushingat their foot, and airy prairies stretching away from their summits, wasesteemed one of the most healthy countries in the world as long as it hadbut few inhabitants. With the breaking up of the soil came in biliousfever and intermittents. A few years of cultivation will render thecountry more healthy, and these diseases will probably disappear, as theyhave done in some parts of western New York. I can remember the time whenthe "Genesee Country," as it was called, was thought quite a sicklyregion--a land just in the skirts of the shadow of death. It is now ashealthy, I believe, as any part of the state.

Letter XXXIV.

Voyage to Sault Ste. Marie.

Sault Ste. Marie, _August_ 13, 1846.

When we left Chicago in the steamer, the other morning, all the vessels inthe port had their flags displayed at half-mast in token ofdissatisfaction with the fate of the harbor bill. You may not recollectthat the bill set apart half a million of dollars for the construction orimprovement of various harbors of the lakes, and authorized the deepeningof the passages through the St. Clair Flats, now intricate and not quitesafe, by which these bulky steamers make their way from the lower lakes tothe upper. The people of the lake region had watched the progress of thebill through Congress with much interest and anxiety, and congratulatedeach other when at length it received a majority of votes in both houses.The President's veto has turned these congratulations into expressions ofdisappointment which are heard on all sides, sometimes expressed with agood deal of energy. But, although the news of the veto reached Chicagotwo or three days before we left the place, nobody had seen the message inwhich it was contained. Perhaps the force of the President's reasoningswill reconcile the minds of people here to the disappointment of theirhopes.

It was a hot August morning as the steamer Wisconsin, an unwieldy bulk,dipping and bobbing upon the small waves, and trembling at every stroke ofthe engine, swept out into the lake. The southwest wind during the warmerportion of the summer months is a sort of Sirocco in Illinois. It blowswith considerable strength, but passing over an immense extent of heatedplains it brings no coolness. It was such an air that accompanied us onour way north from Chicago; and as the passengers huddled into the shadyplaces outside of the state-rooms on the upper deck, I thought of theflocks of quails I had seen gasping in the shadow of the rail-fences onthe prairies.

People here expose themselves to a draught of air with much less scruplethan they do in the Atlantic states. "We do not take cold by it," theysaid to me, when I saw them sitting in a current of wind, after perspiringfreely. If they do not take cold, it is odds but they take something else,a fever perhaps, or what is called a bilious attack. The vicissitudes ofclimate at Chicago and its neighborhood are more sudden and extreme thanwith us, but the inhabitants say that they are not often the cause ofcatarrhs, as in the Atlantic states. Whatever may be the cause, I have metwith no person since I came to the West, who appeared to have a catarrh.From this region perhaps will hereafter proceed singers with the clearestpipes.

Some forty miles beyond Chicago we stopped for half an hour at LittleFort, one of those flourishing little towns which are springing up on thelake shore, to besiege future Congresses for money to build their harbors.This settlement has started up in the woods within the last three or fouryears, and its cluster of roofs, two of the broadest of which coverrespectable-looking hotels, already makes a considerable figure whenviewed from the lake. We passed to the shore over a long platform ofplanks framed upon two rows of posts or piles planted in the sandyshallows. "We make a port in this manner on any part of the western shoreof the lake," said a passenger, "and convenient ports they are, except invery high winds. On the eastern shore, the coast of Michigan, they havenot this advantage; the ice and the northwest winds would rend such awharf as this in pieces. On this side too, the water of the lake, exceptwhen an east wind blows, is smoother than on the Michigan coast, and thesteamers therefore keep under the shelter of this bank."

At Southport, still further north, in the new state of Wisconsin, weprocured a kind of omnibus and were driven over the town, which, for a newsettlement, is uncommonly pretty. We crossed a narrow inlet of the lake, a_creek_ in the proper sense of the term, a winding channel, with water inthe midst, and a rough growth of water-flags and sedges on the sides.Among them grew the wild rice, its bending spikes, heavy with grain,almost ready for the harvest.

"In the northern marshes of Wisconsin," said one of our party, "I haveseen the Indian women gathering this grain. Two of them take their placesin a canoe; one of them seated in the stern pushes it with her paddlethrough the shallows of standing water, while the other, sitting forward,bends the heads of the rice-plant over the sides of the canoe, strikesthem with a little stick and causes the grain to fall within it. In thisway are collected large quantities, which serve as the winter food of theMenomonies, and some other tribes." The grain of the wild rice, I wastold, is of a dark color, but palatable as food. The gentleman who gave methis account had made several attempts to procure it in a fit state to besown, for Judge Buel, of Albany, who was desirous of trying itscultivation on the grassy shallows of our eastern rivers. He was notsuccessfull at first, because, as soon as the grain is collected, it iskiln-dried by the Indians, which destroys the vegetative principle. Atlength, however, he obtained and sent on a small quantity of the freshrice, but it reached Judge Buel only a short time before his death, andthe experiment probably has not been made.

On one side of the creek was a sloping bank of some height, where tall oldforest trees were growing. Among these stood three houses, just built, andthe space between them and the water was formed into gardens with regularterraces faced with turf. Another turn of our vehicle brought us into apublic square, where the oaks of the original forest were left standing,a miniature of the _Champs Elysees_, surrounding which, among the trees,stand many neat houses, some of them built of a drab-colored brick. Backof the town, we had a glimpse of a prairie approaching within half a mileof the river. We were next driven through a street of shops, and thence toour steamer. The streets of Southport are beds of sand, and one of thepassengers who professed to speak from some experience, described theplace as haunted by myriads of fleas.

It was not till about one o'clock of the second night after leavingChicago, that we landed at Mackinaw, and after an infinite deal of troublein getting our baggage together, and keeping it together, we were drivento the Mission House, a plain, comfortable old wooden house, built thirtyor forty years since, by a missionary society, and now turned into anhotel. Beside the road, close to the water's edge, stood several wigwamsof the Potawottamies, pyramids of poles wrapped around with rush matting,each containing a family asleep. The place was crowded with people ontheir way to the mining region of Lake Superior, or returning from it, andwe were obliged to content ourselves with narrow accommodations for thenight.

At half-past seven the next morning we were on our way to the Sault Ste.Marie, in the little steamer General Scott. The wind was blowing fresh,and a score of persons who had intended to visit the Sault were withheldby the fear of seasickness, so that half a dozen of us had the steamer toourselves. In three or four hours we found ourselves gliding out of thelake, through smooth water, between two low points of land covered withfirs and pines into the west strait. We passed Drummond's Island, and thencoasted St. Joseph's Island, on the woody shore of which I was shown asolitary house. There I was told lives a long-nosed Englishman, a half-payofficer, with two wives, sisters, each the mother of a numerous offspring.This English polygamist has been more successful in seeking solitude thanin avoiding notoriety. The very loneliness of his habitation on the shorecauses it to be remarked, and there is not a passenger who makes thevoyage to the Sault, to whom his house is not pointed out, and his storyrelated. It was hinted to me that he had a third wife in Toronto, but Ihave my private doubts of this part of the story, and suspect that it wasthrown in to increase my wonder.

Beyond the island of St. Joseph we passed several islets of rock withfir-trees growing from the clefts. Here, in summer, I was told, theIndians often set up their wigwams, and subsist by fishing. There werenone in sight as we passed, but we frequently saw on either shore theskeletons of the Chippewa habitations. These consist, not like those ofthe Potawottamies, of a circle of sticks placed in the form of a cone, butof slender poles bent into circles, so as to make an almost regularhemisphere, over which, while it serves as a dwelling, birch-bark and matsof bulrushes are thrown.

On the western side of the passage, opposite to St. Joseph's Island,stretches the long coast of Sugar Island, luxuriant with an extensiveforest of the sugar-maple. Here the Indians manufacture maple-sugar in thespring. I inquired concerning their agriculture.

"They plant no corn nor squashes," said a passenger, who had resided forsome time at the Sault; "they will not ripen in this climate; but theyplant potatoes in the sugar-bush, and dig them when the spring opens. Theyhave no other agriculture; they plant no beans as I believe the Indians doelsewhere."

A violent squall of wind and rain fell upon the water just as we enteredthat broad part of the passage which bears the name of Muddy Lake. Inordinary weather the waters are here perfectly pure and translucent, butnow their agitation brought up the loose earth from the shallow bottom,and made them as turbid as the Missouri, with the exception of a narrowchannel in the midst where the current runs deep. Rocky hills now began toshow themselves to the east of us; we passed the sheet of water known bythe name of Lake George, and came to a little river which appeared to haveits source at the foot of a precipitous ridge on the British side. It iscalled Garden River, and a little beyond it, on the same side, lies GardenVillage, inhabited by the Indians. It was now deserted, the Indians havinggone to attend a great assemblage of their race, held on one of theManitoulin Islands, where they are to receive their annual payments fromthe British government. Here were log-houses, and skeletons of wigwams,from which the coverings had been taken. An Indian, when he travels, takeswith him his family and his furniture, the matting for his wigwam, hisimplements for hunting and fishing, his dogs and cats, and finds a homewherever he finds poles for a dwelling. A tornado had recently passed overthe Garden Village. The numerous girdled-trees which stood on its littleclearing, had been twisted off midway or near the ground by the wind, andthe roofs had, in some instances, been lifted from the cabins.

At length, after a winding voyage of sixty miles, between wild banks offorest, in some places smoking with fires, in some looking as if neverviolated either by fire or steel, with huge carcasses of trees moulderingon the ground, and venerable trees standing over them, bearded withstreaming moss, we came in sight of the white rapids of the Sault SainteMarie. We passed the humble cabins of the half-breeds on either shore,with here and there a round wigwam near the water; we glided by a whitechimney standing behind a screen of fir-trees, which, we were told, hadbelonged to the dwelling of Tanner, who himself set fire to his house theother day, before murdering Mr. Schoolcraft, and in a few minutes were atthe wharf of this remotest settlement of the northwest.

Letter XXXV.

Falls of the St. Mary.

Sault Ste. Marie, _August_ 15, 1846.

A crowd had assembled on the wharf of the American village at the SaultSainte Marie, popularly called the _Soo_, to witness our landing; men ofall ages and complexions, in hats and caps of every form and fashion, withbeards of every length and color, among which I discovered two or threepairs of mustaches. It was a party of copper-mine speculators, justflitting from Copper Harbor and Eagle River, mixed with a few Indian andhalf-breed inhabitants of the place. Among them I saw a face or two quitefamiliar in Wall-street.

I had a conversation with an intelligent geologist, who had just returnedfrom an examination of the copper mines of Lake Superior. He had pitchedhis tent in the fields near the village, choosing to pass the night inthis manner, as he had done for several weeks past, rather than in acrowded inn. In regard to the mines, he told me that the external tokens,the surface indications, as he called them, were more favorable than thoseof any copper mines in the world. They are still, however, mere surfaceindications; the veins had not been worked to that depth which wasnecessary to determine their value with any certainty. The mixture ofsilver with the copper he regarded as not giving any additional value tothe mines, inasmuch as it is only occasional and rare. Sometimes, he toldme, a mass of metal would be discovered of the size of a man's fist, orsmaller, composed of copper and silver, both metals closely united, yetboth perfectly pure and unalloyed with each other. The masses of virgincopper found in beds of gravel are, however, the most remarkable featureof these mines. One of them which has been discovered this summer, butwhich has not been raised, is estimated to weigh twenty tons. I saw in thepropeller Independence, by which this party from the copper mines wasbrought down to the Sault, one of these masses, weighing seventeen hundredand fifty pounds, with the appearance of having once been fluid with heat.It was so pure that it might have been cut in pieces by cold steel andstamped at once into coin.

Two or three years ago this settlement of the Sault de Ste. Marie, was buta military post of the United States, in the midst of a village of Indiansand half-breeds. There were, perhaps, a dozen white residents in theplace, including the family of the Baptist Missionary and the agent of theAmerican Fur Company, which had removed its station hither from Mackinaw,and built its warehouse on this river. But since the world has begun totalk of the copper mines of Lake Superior, settlers flock into the place;carpenters are busy in knocking up houses with all haste on thegovernment lands, and large warehouses have been built upon piles driveninto the shallows of the St. Mary. Five years hence, the primitivecharacter of the place will be altogether lost, and it will have become abustling Yankee town, resembling the other new settlements of the West.

Here the navigation from lake to lake is interrupted by the falls orrapids of the river St. Mary, from which the place receives its name. Thecrystalline waters of Lake Superior on their way through the channel ofthis river to Lake Huron, here rush, and foam, and roar, for about threequarters of a mile, over rocks and large stones.

Close to the rapids, with birchen-canoes moored in little inlets, is avillage of the Indians, consisting of log-cabins and round wigwams, on ashrubby level, reserved to them by the government. The morning after ourarrival, we went through this village in search of a canoe and a couple ofIndians, to make the descent of the rapids, which is one of the firstthings that a visitor to the Sault must think of. In the first wigwam thatwe entered were three men and two women as drunk as men and women couldwell be. The squaws were speechless and motionless, too far gone, as itseemed, to raise either hand or foot; the men though apparently unable torise were noisy, and one of them, who called himself a half-breed andspoke a few words of English, seemed disposed to quarrel. Before the nextdoor was a woman busy in washing, who spoke a little English. "The oldman out there," she said, in answer to our questions, "can paddle canoe,but he is very drunk, he can not do it to-day."

"Is there nobody else," we asked, "who will take us down the falls?"

"I don't know; the Indians all drunk to-day."

"Why is that? why are they all drunk to-day?"

"Oh, the whisky," answered the woman, giving us to understand, that whenan Indian could get whisky, he got drunk as a matter of course.

By this time the man had come up, and after addressing us with thecustomary "_bon jour_" manifested a curiosity to know the nature of ourerrand. The woman explained it to him in English.

"Oh, messieurs, je vous servirai," said he, for he spoke Canadian French;"I go, I go."

We shook him off as soon as we could, but not till after he had time topropose that we should wait till the next day, and to utter the maxim,"Whisky, good--too much whisky, no good."

In a log-cabin, which some half-breeds were engaged in building, we foundtwo men who were easily persuaded to leave their work and pilot us overthe rapids. They took one of the canoes which lay in a little inlet closeat hand, and entering it, pushed it with their long poles up the stream inthe edge of the rapids. Arriving at the head of the rapids, they took inour party, which consisted of five, and we began the descent. At each endof the canoe sat a half-breed, with a paddle, to guide it while thecurrent drew us rapidly down among the agitated waters. It was surprisingwith what dexterity they kept us in the smoothest part of the water,seeming to know the way down as well as if it had been a beaten path inthe fields.

At one time we would seem to be directly approaching a rock against whichthe waves were dashing, at another to be descending into a hollow of thewaters in which our canoe would be inevitably filled, but a single strokeof the paddle given by the man at the prow put us safely by the seemingdanger. So rapid was the descent, that almost as soon as we descried theapparent peril, it was passed. In less than ten minutes, as it seemed tome, we had left the roar of the rapids behind us, and were gliding overthe smooth water at their foot.

In the afternoon we engaged a half-breed and his brother to take us overto the Canadian shore. His wife, a slender young woman with a livelyphysiognomy, not easily to be distinguished from a French woman of herclass, accompanied us in the canoe with her little boy. The birch-barkcanoe of the savage seems to me one of the most beautiful and perfectthings of the kind constructed by human art. We were in one of the finestthat float on St. Mary's river, and when I looked at its delicate ribs,mere shavings of white cedar, yet firm enough for the purpose--the thinbroad laths of the same wood with which these are inclosed, and the broadsheets of birch-bark, impervious to water, which sheathed the outside, allfirmly sewed together by the tough slender roots of the fir-tree, and whenI considered its extreme lightness and the grace of its form, I could notbut wonder at the ingenuity of those who had invented so beautiful acombination of ship-building and basket-work. "It cost me twenty dollars,"said the half-breed, "and I would not take thirty for it."

We were ferried over the waves where they dance at the foot of the rapids.At this place large quantities of white-fish, one of the most delicatekinds known on our continent, are caught by the Indians, in their season,with scoop-nets. The whites are about to interfere with this occupation ofthe Indians, and I saw the other day a seine of prodigious lengthconstructing, with which it is intended to sweep nearly half the river atonce. "They will take a hundred barrels a day," said an inhabitant of theplace.

On the British side, the rapids divide themselves into half a dozen noisybrooks, which roar round little islands, and in the boiling pools of whichthe speckled trout is caught with the rod and line. We landed at thewarehouses of the Hudson Bay Company, where the goods intended for theIndian trade are deposited, and the furs brought from the northwest arecollected. They are surrounded by a massive stockade, within which livesthe agent of the Company, the walks are graveled and well-kept, and thewhole bears the marks of British solidity and precision. A quantity offurs had been brought in the day before, but they were locked up in thewarehouse, and all was now quiet and silent. The agent was absent; ahalf-breed nurse stood at the door with his child, and a Scotch servant,apparently with nothing to do, was lounging in the court inclosed by thestockade; in short, there was less bustle about this centre of one of themost powerful trading-companies in the world, than about one of ourfarm-houses.

Crossing the bay, at the bottom of which these buildings stand, we landedat a Canadian village of half-breeds. Here were one or two wigwams and ascore of log-cabins, some of which we entered. In one of them we werereceived with great appearance of deference by a woman of decidedly Indianfeatures, but light-complexioned, barefoot, with blue embroidered leggingsfalling over her ankles and sweeping the floor, the only peculiarity ofIndian costume about her. The house was as clean as scouring could makeit, and her two little children, with little French physiognomies, werefairer than many children of the European race. These people are descendedfrom the French voyageurs and settlers on one side; they speak CanadianFrench more or less, but generally employ the Chippewa language in theirintercourse with each other.

Near at hand was a burial ground, with graves of the Indians andhalf-breeds, which we entered. Some of the graves were covered with a lowroof of cedar-bark, others with a wooden box; over others was placed alittle house like a dog-kennel, except that it had no door, others werecovered with little log-cabins. One of these was of such a size that asmall Indian family would have found it amply large for theiraccommodation. It is a practice among the savages to protect the graves ofthe dead from the wolves, by stakes driven into the ground and meeting atthe top like the rafters of a roof; and perhaps when the Indian orhalf-breed exchanged his wigwam for a log-cabin, his respect for the deadled him to make the same improvement in the architecture of their narrowhouses. At the head of most of these monuments stood wooden crosses, forthe population here is principally Roman Catholic, some of them inscribedwith the names of the dead, not always accurately spelled.

Not far from the church stands a building, regarded by the half-breeds asa wonder of architecture, the stone house, _la maison de pierre_, as theycall it, a large mansion built of stone by a former agent of the Northwestor Hudson Bay Company, who lived here in a kind of grand manorial style,with his servants and horses and hounds, and gave hospitable dinners inthose days when it was the fashion for the host to do his best to drinkhis guests under the table. The old splendor of the place has departed,its gardens are overgrown with grass, the barn has been blown down, thekitchen in which so many grand dinners were cooked consumed by fire, andthe mansion, with its broken and patched windows, is now occupied by aScotch farmer of the name of Wilson.

We climbed a ridge of hills back of the house to the church of theEpiscopal Mission, built a few years ago as a place of worship for theChippewas, who have since been removed by the government. It stands remotefrom any habitation, with three or four Indian graves near it, and wefound it filled with hay. The view from its door is uncommonly beautiful;the broad St. Mary lying below, with its bordering villages and woodyvalley, its white rapids and its rocky islands, picturesque with thepointed summits of the fir-tree. To the northwest the sight followed theriver to the horizon, where it issued from Lake Superior, and I was toldthat in clear weather one might discover, from the spot on which I stood,the promontory of Gros Cap, which guards the outlet of that mighty lake.

The country around was smoking in a dozen places with fires in the woods.When I returned I asked who kindled them. "It is old Tanner," said one,"the man who murdered Schoolcraft." There is great fear here of Tanner,who is thought to be lurking yet in the neighborhood. I was going theother day to look at a view of the place from an eminence, reached by aroad passing through a swamp, full of larches and firs. "Are you notafraid of Tanner?" I was asked. Mrs. Schoolcraft, since the assassinationof her husband, has come to live in the fort, which consists of barracksprotected by a high stockade. It is rumored that Tanner has been seenskulking about within a day or two, and yesterday a place was discoveredwhich is supposed to have served for his retreat. It was a hollow, thicklysurrounded by shrubs, which some person had evidently made his habitationfor a considerable time. There is a dispute whether this man is insane ornot, but there is no dispute as to his malignity. He has threatened totake the life of Mr. Bingham, the venerable Baptist missionary at thisplace, and as long as it is not certain that he has left the neighborhooda feeling of insecurity prevails. Nevertheless, as I know no reason whythis man should take it into his head to shoot me, I go whither I list,without the fear of Tanner before my eyes.

Letter XXXVI.

Indians at the Sault.

Mackinaw, _August_ 19, 1846.

We were detained two days longer than we expected at the Sault de Ste.Marie, by the failure of the steamer General Scott to depart at the propertime. If we could have found a steamer going up Lake Superior, we shouldmost certainly have quieted our impatience at this delay, by embarking onboard of her. But the only steamer in the river St. Mary, above the falls,which is a sort of arm or harbor of Lake Superior, was the Julia Palmer,and she was lying aground in the pebbles and sand of the shore. She hadjust been dragged over the portage which passes round the falls, where abroad path, with hillocks flattened, and trunks hewn off close to thesurface, gave tokens of the vast bulk that had been moved over it. Themoment she touched the water, she stuck fast, and the engineer was obligedto go to Cleveland for additional machinery to move her forward. He hadjust arrived with the proper apparatus, and the steamer had begun to workits way slowly into the deep water; but some days must yet elapse beforeshe can float, and after that the engine must be put together.

Had the Julia Palmer been ready to proceed up the lake, I shouldcertainly have seized the occasion to be present at an immense assemblageof Indians on Madeleine Island. This island lies far in the lake, near itsremoter extremity. On one of its capes, called La Pointe, is a missionarystation and an Indian village, and here the savages are gathering in vastnumbers to receive their annual payments from the United States.

"There were already two thousand of them at La Pointe when I left theplace," said an intelligent gentleman who had just returned from the lake,"and they were starving. If an Indian family has a stock of provisions onhand sufficient for a month, it is sure to eat it up in a week, and theIndians at La Pointe had already consumed all they had provided, and wereliving on what they could shoot in the woods, or get by fishing in thelake."

I inquired of him the probable number of Indians the occasion would bringtogether.

"Seven thousand," he answered. "Among them are some of the wildest tribeson the continent, whose habits have been least changed by the neighborhoodof the white man. A new tribe will come in who never before would have anytransactions with the government. They are called the Pillagers, a fierceand warlike race, proud of their independence, and, next to the Blackfeetand the Camanches, the most ferocious and formidable tribe within theterritory of the United States. They inhabit the country about Red Riverand the head-waters of the Mississippi."

I was further told that some of the Indian traders had expressed theirdetermination to disregard the law, set up their tents at La Pointe, andsell spirits to the savages. "If they do, knives will be drawn," was thecommon saying at the Sault; and at the Fort, I learned that a requisitionhad arrived from La Pointe for twenty men to enforce the law and preventdisorder. "We can not send half the number," said the officer whocommanded at the Fort, "we have but twelve men in all; the rest of thegarrison have been ordered to the Mexican frontier, and it is necessarythat somebody should remain to guard the public property." The call fortroops has since been transferred to the garrison at Mackinaw, from whichthey will be sent.

I learned afterward from an intelligent lady of the half-caste at theSault, that letters had arrived, from which it appeared that more thanfour thousand Indians were already assembled at La Pointe, and that theirstock of provisions was exhausted.

"They expected," said the lady, "to be paid off on the 15th of August, butthe government has changed the time to nearly a month later. This isunfortunate for the Indians, for now is the time of their harvest, theseason for gathering wild rice in the marshes, and they must, inconsequence, not only suffer with hunger now, but in the winter also."

In a stroll which we made through the Indian village, situated close tothe rapids, we fell in with a half-breed, a sensible-looking man, livingin a log cabin, whose boys, the offspring of a squaw of the pure Indianrace, were practicing with their bows and arrows. "You do not go to LaPointe?" we asked. "It is too far to go for a blanket," was his answer--hespoke tolerable English. This man seemed to have inherited from the whiteside of his ancestry somewhat of the love of a constant habitation, for agenuine Indian has no particular dislike to a distant journey. He takeshis habitation with him, and is at home wherever there is game and fish,and poles with which to construct his lodge. In a further conversationwith the half-breed, he spoke of the Sault as a delightful abode, andexpatiated on the pleasures of the place.

"It is the greatest place in the world for fun," said he; "we dance allwinter; our women are all good dancers; our little girls can dance singleand double jigs as good as any body in the States. That little girlthere," pointing to a long-haired girl at the door, "will dance as good asany body."

The fusion of the two races in this neighborhood is remarkable; the mixedbreed running by gradual shades into the aboriginal on the one hand, andinto the white on the other; children with a tinge of the copper hue inthe families of white men, and children scarcely less fair sometimes seenin the wigwams. Some of the half-caste ladies at the Falls of St. Mary,who have been educated in the Atlantic states, are persons of graceful anddignified manners and agreeable conversation.

I attended worship at the Fort, at the Sault, on Sunday. The services wereconducted by the chaplain, who is of the Methodist persuasion and amissionary at the place, assisted by the Baptist missionary. I lookedabout me for some evidence of the success of their labors, but among theworshipers I saw not one male of Indian descent. Of the females, half adozen, perhaps, were of the half-caste; and as two of these walked awayfrom the church, I perceived that they wore a fringed clothing for theankles, as if they took a certain pride in this badge of their Indianextraction.

In the afternoon we drove down the west bank of the river to attendreligious service at an Indian village, called the Little Rapids, abouttwo miles and a half from the Sault. Here the Methodists have built amission-house, maintain a missionary, and instruct a fragment of theChippewa tribe. We found the missionary, Mr. Speight, a Kentuckian, whohas wandered to this northern region, quite ill, and there wasconsequently no service.

We walked through the village, which is prettily situated on a swift anddeep channel of the St. Mary, where the green waters rush between themain-land and a wooded island. It stands on rich meadows of the river,with a path running before it, parallel with the bank, along the velvetsward, and backed at no great distance by the thick original forest,which not far below closes upon the river on both sides. The inhabitantsat the doors and windows of their log-cabins had a demure and subduedaspect; they were dressed in their clean Sunday clothes, and the peace andquiet of the place formed a strong contrast to the debaucheries we hadwitnessed at the village by the Falls. We fell in with an Indian, a quietlittle man, of very decent appearance, who answered our questions withgreat civility. We asked to whom belonged the meadows lying back of thecabins, on which we saw patches of rye, oats, and potatoes.

"Oh, they belong to the mission; the Indians work them."

"Are they good people, these Indians?"

"Oh yes, good people."

"Do they never drink too much whisky?"

"Well, I guess they drink too much whisky sometimes."

There was a single wigwam in the village, apparently a supplement to oneof the log-cabins. We looked in and saw two Indian looms, from which twounfinished mats were depending. Mrs. Speight, the wife of the missionary,told us that, a few days before, the village had been full of theselodges; that the Indians delighted in them greatly, and always put them upduring the mosquito season; "for a mosquito," said the good lady, "willnever enter a wigwam;" and that lately, the mosquitoes having disappeared,and the nights having grown cooler, they had taken down all but the one wesaw.

We passed a few minutes in the house of the missionary, to which Mrs.Speight kindly invited us. She gave a rather favorable account of theIndians under her husband's charge, but manifestly an honest one, andwithout any wish to extenuate the defects of their character.

"There are many excellent persons among them," she said; "they are a kind,simple, honest people, and some of them are eminently pious."

"Do they follow any regular industry?"

"Many of them are as regularly industrious as the whites, rising early andcontinuing at their work in the fields all day. They are not so attentiveas we could wish to the education of their children. It is difficult tomake them send their children regularly to school; they think they confera favor in allowing us to instruct them, and if they happen to take alittle offense their children are kept at home. The great evil againstwhich we have to guard is the love of strong drink. When this is offeredto an Indian, it seems as if it was not in his nature to resist thetemptation. I have known whole congregations of Indians, good Indians,ruined and brought to nothing by the opportunity of obtaining whisky asoften as they pleased."

We inquired whether the numbers of the people at the mission werediminishing. She could not speak with much certainty as to this point,having been only a year and a half at the mission, but she thought therewas a gradual decrease.

"The families of the Indians," she said, in answer to one of myquestions, "are small. In one family at the village are six children, andit is the talk of all the Indians, far and near, as somethingextraordinary. Generally the number is much smaller, and more than halfthe children die in infancy. Their means would not allow them to rear manychildren, even if the number of births was greater."

Such appears to be the destiny of the red race while in the presence ofthe white--decay and gradual extinction, even under circumstancesapparently the most favorable to its preservation.

On Monday we left the Falls of St. Mary, in the steamer General Scott, onour return to Mackinaw. There were about forty passengers on board, men insearch of copper-mines, and men in search of health, and travellers fromcuriosity, Virginians, New Yorkers, wanderers from Illinois, Indiana,Massachusetts, and I believe several other states. On reaching Mackinaw inthe evening, our party took quarters in the Mansion House, the obliginghost of which stretched his means to the utmost for our accommodation.Mackinaw is at the present moment crowded with strangers; attracted by thecool healthful climate and the extreme beauty of the place. We were packedfor the night almost as closely as the Potawottamies, whose lodges were onthe beach before us. Parlors and garrets were turned into sleeping-rooms;beds were made on the floors and in the passages, and double-bedded roomswere made to receive four beds. It is no difficult feat to sleep atMackinaw, even in an August night, and we soon forgot, in a refreshingslumber, the narrowness of our quarters.

Letter XXXVII.

The Island of Mackinaw.

Steamer St. Louis, Lake Huron, _August_ 20, 1846.

Yesterday evening we left the beautiful island of Mackinaw, after a visitof two days delightfully passed. We had climbed its cliffs, rambled on itsshores, threaded the walks among its thickets, driven out in the roadsthat wind through its woods--roads paved by nature with limestone pebbles,a sort of natural macadamization, and the time of our departure seemed toarrive several days too soon.

The fort which crowns the heights near the shore commands an extensiveprospect, but a still wider one is to be seen from the old fort, FortHolmes, as it is called, among whose ruined intrenchments the half-breedboys and girls now gather gooseberries. It stands on the very crest of theisland, overlooking all the rest. The air, when we ascended it, was loadedwith the smoke of burning forests, but from this spot, in clear weather, Iwas told a magnificent view might be had of the Straits of Mackinaw, thewooded islands, and the shores and capes of the great mainland, placesknown to history for the past two centuries. For when you are at Mackinawyou are at no new settlement.

In looking for samples of Indian embroidery with porcupine quills, wefound ourselves one day in the warehouse of the American Fur Company, atMackinaw. Here, on the shelves, were piles of blankets, white and blue,red scarfs, and white boots; snow-shoes were hanging on the walls, andwolf-traps, rifles, and hatchets, were slung to the ceiling--an assortmentof goods destined for the Indians and half-breeds of the northwest. Theperson who attended at the counter spoke English with a foreign accent. Iasked him how long he had been in the northwestern country.

"To say the truth," he answered, "I have been here sixty years and somedays."

"You were born here, then."

"I am a native of Mackinaw, French by the mother's side; my father was anEnglishman."

"Was the place as considerable sixty years ago as it now is?"

"More so. There was more trade here, and quite as many inhabitants. Allthe houses, or nearly all, were then built; two or three only have beenput up since."

I could easily imagine that Mackinaw must have been a place of consequencewhen here was the centre of the fur trade, now removed further up thecountry. I was shown the large house in which the heads of the companiesof _voyageurs_ engaged in the trade were lodged, and the barracks, a longlow building, in which the _voyageurs_ themselves, seven hundred innumber, made their quarters from the end of June till the beginning ofOctober, when they went out again on their journeys. This interval ofthree months was a merry time with those light-hearted Frenchmen. When aboat made its appearance approaching Mackinaw, they fell to conjecturingto what company of _voyageurs_ it belonged; as the dispute grew warm theconjectures became bets, till finally, unable to restrain theirimpatience, the boldest of them dashed into the waters, swam out to theboat, and climbing on board, shook hands with their brethren, amidst theshouts of those who stood on the beach.

They talk, on the New England coast, of Chebacco boats, built after apeculiar pattern, and called after Chebacco, an ancient settlement ofsea-faring men, who have foolishly changed the old Indian name of theirplace to Ipswich. The Mackinaw navigators have also given their name to aboat of peculiar form, sharp at both ends, swelled at the sides, andflat-bottomed, an excellent sea-boat, it is said, as it must be to live inthe wild storms that surprise the mariner on Lake Superior.

We took yesterday a drive to the western shore. The road twined through awood of over-arching beeches and maples, interspersed with the white-cedarand fir. The driver stopped before a cliff sprouting with beeches andcedars, with a small cavity at the foot. This he told us was the SkullCave. It is only remarkable on account of human bones having been foundin it. Further on a white paling gleamed through the trees; it inclosedthe solitary burial ground of the garrison, with half a dozen graves."There are few buried here," said a gentleman of our party; "the soldierswho come to Mackinaw sick get well soon."

The road we travelled was cut through the woods by Captain Scott, whocommanded at the fort a few years since. He is the marksman whose aim wasso sure that the western people say of him, that a raccoon on a tree onceoffered to come down and surrender without giving him the trouble to fire.

We passed a farm surrounded with beautiful groves. In one of its meadowswas fought the battle between Colonel Croghan and the British officerHolmes in the war of 1813. Three luxuriant beeches stand in the edge ofthe wood, north of the meadow; one of them is the monument of Holmes; helies buried at its root. Another quarter of a mile led us to a little bayon the solitary shore of the lake looking to the northwest. It is calledthe British Landing, because the British troops landed here in the latewar to take possession of the island.

We wandered about awhile, and then sat down upon the embankment of pebbleswhich the waves of the lake, heaving for centuries, have heaped around theshore of the island--pebbles so clean that they would no more soil alady's white muslin gown than if they had been of newly polishedalabaster. The water at our feet was as transparent as the air around us.On the main-land opposite stood a church with its spire, and several roofswere visible, with a background of woods behind them.

"There," said one of our party, "is the old Mission Church. It was builtby the Catholics in 1680, and has been a place of worship ever since. Thename of the spot is Point St. Ignace, and there lives an Indian of thefull caste, who was sent to Rome and educated to be a priest, but hepreferred the life of a layman, and there he lives on that wild shore,with a library in his lodge, a learned savage, occupied with reading andstudy."

You may well suppose that I felt a strong desire to see Point St. Ignace,its venerable Mission Church, its Indian village, so long under the careof Catholic pastors, and its learned savage who talks Italian, but thetime of my departure was already fixed. My companions were pointing out onthat shore, the mouth of Carp River, which comes down through the forestroaring over rocks, and in any of the pools of which you have only tothrow a line, with any sort of bait, to be sure of a trout, when thedriver of our vehicle called out, "Your boat is coming." We looked and sawthe St. Louis steamer, not one of the largest, but one of the finest boatsin the line between Buffalo and Chicago, making rapidly for the island,with a train of black smoke hanging in the air behind her. We hastened toreturn through the woods, and in an hour and a half we were in our cleanand comfortable quarters in this well-ordered little steamer.

But I should mention that before leaving Mackinaw, we did not fail tovisit the principal curiosities of the place, the Sugar Loaf Rock, aremarkable rock in the middle of the island, of a sharp conical form,rising above the trees by which it is surrounded, and lifting the stuntedbirches on its shoulders higher than they, like a tall fellow holding up alittle boy to overlook a crowd of men--and the Arched Rock on the shore.The atmosphere was thick with smoke, and through the opening spanned bythe arch of the rock I saw the long waves, rolled up by a fresh wind, comeone after another out of the obscurity, and break with roaring on thebeach.

The path along the brow of the precipice and among the evergreens, bywhich this rock is reached, is singularly wild, but another which leads toit along the shore is no less picturesque--passing under impending cliffsand overshadowing cedars, and between huge blocks and pinnacles of rock.

I spoke in one of my former letters of the manifest fate of Mackinaw,which is to be a watering-place. I can not see how it is to escape thisdestiny. People already begin to repair to it for health and refreshmentfrom the southern borders of Lake Michigan. Its climate during the summermonths is delightful; there is no air more pure and elastic, and the windsof the south and southwest, which are so hot on the prairies, arrive heretempered to a grateful coolness by the waters over which they have swept.The nights are always, in the hottest season, agreeably cool, and thehealth of the place is proverbial. The world has not many islands sobeautiful as Mackinaw, as you may judge from the description I havealready given of parts of it. The surface is singularly irregular, withsummits of rock and pleasant hollows, open glades of pasturage and shadynooks. To some, the savage visitors, who occasionally set up their lodgeson its beach, as well as on that of the surrounding islands, and paddletheir canoes in its waters, will be an additional attraction. I can notbut think with a kind of regret on the time which, I suppose is near athand, when its wild and lonely woods will be intersected with highways,and filled with cottages and boarding-houses.

Letter XXXVIII.

An Excursion to the Water Gap.

Stroudsberg, Monroe Co., Penn. _October_ 23, 1846.

I reached this place last evening, having taken Easton in my way. Did itever occur to you, in passing through New Jersey, how much the northernpart of the state is, in some respects, like New York, and how much thesouthern part resembles Pennsylvania? For twenty miles before reachingEaston, you see spacious dwelling-houses, often of stone, substantiallybuilt, and barns of the size of churches, and large farms with extensivewoods of tall trees, as in Pennsylvania, where the right of soil has notundergone so many subdivisions as with us. I was shown in Warren county,in a region apparently of great fertility, a farm which was said to be twomiles square. It belonged to a farmer of German origin, whose comfortablemansion stood by the way, and who came into the state many years ago, ayoung man.

"I have heard him say," said a passenger, "that when his father broughthim out with his young wife into Warren county, and set him down upon whatthen appeared a barren little farm, now a part of his large and productiveestate, his heart failed him. However he went to work industriously,practicing the strictest economy, and by applying lime copiously to thesoil made it highly fertile. It is lime which makes this region therichest land in New Jersey; the farmers find limestone close at hand, burnit in their kilns, and scatter it on the surface. The person of whom Ispeak took off large crops from his little farm, and as soon as he had anymoney beforehand, he added a few acres more, so that it gradually grew toits present size. Rich as he is, he is a worthy man; his sons, who arenumerous, are all fine fellows, not a scape-grace among them, and he hassettled them all on farms around him."

Easton, which we entered soon after dark, is a pretty little town of seventhousand inhabitants, much more substantially built than towns of the samesize in this country. Many of the houses are of stone, and to the sides ofsome of them you see the ivy clinging and hiding the masonry with a veilof evergreen foliage. The middle of the streets is unpaved and very dusty,but the broad flagging on the sides, under the windows of the houses, issedulously swept. The situation of the place is uncommonly picturesque. Ifever the little borough of Easton shall grow into a great town, it willstand on one of the most commanding sites in the world, unless itsinhabitants shall have spoiled it by improvements. The Delaware, whichforms the eastern bound of the borough, approaches it from the norththrough high wooded banks, and flows away to join the Susquehanna betweencraggy precipices. On the south side, the Lehigh comes down through adeep, verdant hollow, and on the north the Bushkill winds through a glenshaded with trees, on the rocky banks of which is one of the finest drivesin the world. In the midst of the borough rises a crag as lofty as that onwhich Stirling Castle is built--in Europe, it would most certainly havebeen crowned with its castle; steep and grassy on one side, andprecipitous and rocky on the other, where it overhangs the Bushkill. Thecollege stands on a lofty eminence, overlooking the dwellings and streets,but it is an ugly building, and has not a tree to conceal even in part itsugliness. Besides these, are various other eminences in the immediatevicinity of this compact little town, which add greatly to its beauty.

We set out the next morning for the Delaware Water Gap, following the roadalong the Delaware, which is here uncommonly beautiful. The steep bank ismostly covered with trees sprouting from the rocky shelves, and below is afringe of trees between the road and the river. A little way from thetown, the driver pointed out, in the midst of the stream, a long island ofloose stones and pebbles, without a leaf or stem of herbage.

"It was there," said he, "that Gaetter, six years ago, was hanged for themurder of his wife."

The high and steep bank of the river, the rocks and the trees, heproceeded to tell us, were covered on that day with eager spectators fromall the surrounding country, every one of whom, looking immediately downon the island, could enjoy a perfect view of the process by which the poorwretch in the hands of the hangman was turned off.

About five miles from Easton we stopped to water our horses at an inn, alarge handsome stone house, with a chatty landlord, who spoke with astrong German accent, complaining pathetically of the potato disease,which had got into the fields of the neighborhood, but glorying in theabundant crops of maize and wheat which had been gathered. Two milesfurther on, we turned away from the river and ascended to the table-landabove, which we found green with extensive fields of wheat, just springingunder the autumnal sun. In one of the little villages nestling in thehollows of that region, we stopped for a few moments, and fell intoconversation with a tolerably intelligent man, though speaking Englishwith some peculiarities that indicated the race to which he belonged. Asample of his dialect may amuse you. We asked him what the people in thatpart of the country thought of the new tariff.

"Oh," said he, "there are different obinions, some likes it and some not."

"How do the democrats take it?"

"The democratic in brinciple likes it."

"Did it have any effect on the election?"

"It brevented a goot many democrats from voting for their candidate forCongress, Mr. Brodhead, because he is for the old tariff. This is a verystrong democratic district, and Mr. Brodhead's majority is only about asousand."

A little beyond this village we came in sight of the Water Gap, where theBlue Ridge has been cloven down to its base to form a passage for theDelaware. Two lofty summits, black with precipices of rock, form the gatesthrough which the river issues into the open country. Here it runs noisilyover the shallows, as if boasting aloud of the victory it had achieved inbreaking its way through such mighty barriers; but within the Gap itsleeps in quiet pools, or flows in deep glassy currents. By the side ofthese you see large rafts composed of enormous trunks of trees that havefloated down with the spring floods from the New York forests, and herewait for their turn in the saw-mills along the shore. It was a brightmorning, with a keen autumnal air, and we dismounted from our vehicle andwalked through the Gap.

It will give your readers an idea of the Water Gap, to say that itconsists of a succession of lofty peaks, like the Highlands of the Hudson,with a winding and irregular space between them a few rods wide, to givepassage to the river. They are unlike the Highlands, however, in onerespect, that their sides are covered with large loose blocks detachedfrom the main precipices. Among these grows the original forest, whichdescends to their foot, fringes the river, and embowers the road.

The present autumn is, I must say, in regard to the coloring of theforests, one of the shabbiest and least brilliant I remember to have seenin this country, almost as sallow and dingy in its hues as an autumn inEurope. But here in the Water Gap it was not without some of itsaccustomed brightness of tints--the sugar-maple with its golden leaves,and the water-maple with its foliage of scarlet, contrasted with theintense green of the hemlock-fir, the pine, the rosebay-laurel, and themountain-laurel, which here grow in the same thicket, while the groundbelow was carpeted with humbler evergreens, the aromatic wintergreen, andthe trailing arbutus. The Water Gap is about a mile in length, and nearits northern entrance an excellent hotel, the resort of summer visitors,stands on a cliff which rises more than a hundred feet almostperpendicularly from the river. From this place the eye follows the WaterGap to where mountains shut in one behind another, like the teeth of asaw, and between them the Delaware twines out of sight.

Before the hotel a fine little boy of about two years of age was at play.The landlord showed us on the calf of the child's leg two small luridspots, about a quarter of an inch apart. "That," said he, "is the bite ofa copper-head snake."

We asked when this happened.

"It was last summer," answered he; "the child was playing on the side ofthe road, when he was heard to cry, and seen to make for the house. Assoon as he came, my wife called my attention to what she called a scratchon his leg. I examined it, the spot was already purple and hard, and thechild was crying violently. I knew it to be the bite of a copper-head, andimmediately cut it open with a sharp knife, making the blood to flowfreely and washing the part with water. At the same time we got a yerb"(such was his pronunciation) "on the hills, which some call lion-heart,and others snake-head. We steeped this yerb in milk which we made himdrink. The doctor had been sent for, and when he came applied hartshorn;but I believe that opening the wound and letting the blood flow was themost effectual remedy. The leg was terribly swollen, and for ten days wethought the little fellow in great danger, but after that he became betterand finally recovered."

"How do you know that it was a copper-head that bit him?"

"We sent to the place where he was at play, found the snake, and killedit. A violent rain had fallen just before, and it had probably washed himdown from the mountain-side."

"The boy appears very healthy now."

"Much better than before; he was formerly delicate, and troubled with aneruption, but that has disappeared, and he has become hardy and fond ofthe open air."

We dined at the hotel and left the Water Gap. As we passed out of its jawswe met a man in a little wagon, carrying behind him the carcass of a deerhe had just killed. They are hunted, at this time of the year, and killedin considerable numbers in the extensive forests to the north of thisplace. A drive of four miles over hill and valley brought us toStroudsburg, on the banks of the Pocano--a place of which I shall speak inmy next letter.

Letter XLII.

An Excursion to the Water Gap.

Easton, Penn., _October_ 24, 1846.

My yesterday's letter left me at Stroudsburg, about four miles west of theDelaware. It is a pleasant village, situated on the banks of the Pocano.From this stream the inhabitants have diverted a considerable portion ofthe water, bringing the current through this village in a canal, making itto dive under the road and rise again on the opposite side, after which ithastens to turn a cluster of mills. To the north is seen the summit of thePocano mountain, where this stream has its springs, with woods stretchingdown its sides and covering the adjacent country. Here, about nine milesto the north of the village, deer haunt and are hunted. I heard of one manwho had already killed nine of these animals within two or three weeks. Atraveller from Wyoming county, whom I met at our inn, gave me some accountof the winter life of the deer.

"They inhabit," he said, "the swamps of mountain-laurel thickets, throughwhich a man would find it almost impossible to make his way. Thelaurel-bushes, and the hemlocks scattered among them, intercept the snowas it falls, and form a thick roof, under the shelter of which, near somepool or rivulet, the animals remain until spring opens, as snuglyprotected from the severity of the weather as sheep under the sheds of afarm-yard. Here they feed upon the leaves of the laurel and otherevergreens. It is contrary to the law to kill them after the Christmasholidays, but sometimes their retreat is invaded, and a deer or twokilled; their flesh, however, is not wholesome, on account of the laurelleaves on which they feed, and their skin is nearly worthless."

I expressed my surprise that the leaves of the mountain laurel, the_kalmia latifolia_, which are so deadly to sheep, should be the winterfood of the deer.

"It is because the deer has no gall," answered the man, "that the pisondon't take effect. But their meat will not do to eat, except in a smallquantity, and cooked with pork, which I think helps take the pison out ofit."

"The deer," he went on to say, "are now passing out of the blue into thegray. After the holidays, when their hair becomes long, and their wintercoat is quite grown, their hide is soft and tender, and tears easily whendressed, and it would be folly to kill them, even if there were no lawagainst it." He went on to find a parallel to the case of the deer-skinsin the hides of neat-cattle, which, when brought from a hot country, likeSouth America, are firmer and tougher than when obtained in a colderclimate like ours.

The Wyoming traveller gave a bad account of the health, just at present,of the beautiful valley in which he lived. "We have never before," saidhe, "known what it was to have the fever and ague among us, but now it isvery common, as well as other fevers. The season has neither beenuncommonly wet nor uncommonly dry, but it has been uncommonly hot." Iheard the same account of various other districts in Pennsylvania. Mifflincounty, for example, was sickly this season, as well as other parts of thestate which, hitherto have been almost uniformly healthy. Here, however,in Stroudsburg and its neighborhood, they boasted that the fever and aguehad never yet made its appearance.

I was glad to hear a good account of the pecuniary circumstances of thePennsylvania farmers. They got in debt like every body else during theprosperous years of 1835 and 1836, and have been ever since workingthemselves gradually out of it. "I have never," said an intelligentgentleman of Stroudsburg, "known the owners of the farms so free fromdebt, and so generally easy and prosperous in their condition, as at thismoment." It is to be hoped that having been so successful in paying theirprivate debts, they will now try what can be done with the debt of thestate.

We left Stroudsburg this morning--one of the finest mornings of thisautumnal season--and soon climbed an eminence which looked down uponCherry Hollow. This place reminded me, with the exception of its forests,of the valleys in the Peak of Derbyshire, the same rounded summits, thesame green, basin-like hollows. But here, on the hill-sides, were tallgroves of oak and chestnut, instead of the brown heath; and the largestone houses of the German householders were very unlike the Derbyshirecottages. The valley is four miles in length, and its eastern extremity iswashed by the Delaware. Climbing out of this valley and passing for somemiles through yellow woods and fields of springing corn, not Indian corn,we found ourselves at length travelling on the side of another longvalley, which terminates at its southern extremity in the Wind Gap.

The Wind Gap is an opening in the same mountain ridge which is cloven bythe Water Gap, but, unlike that, it extends only about half-way down tothe base. Through this opening, bordered on each side by large looseblocks of stone, the road passes. After you have reached the open countrybeyond, you look back and see the ridge stretching away eastward towardsthe Water Gap, and in the other direction towards the southwest till itsinks out of sight, a rocky wall of uniform height, with this opening inthe midst, which looks as if part of the mountain had here fallen into anabyss below. Beyond the Wind Gap we came to the village of Windham, lyingin the shelter of this mountain barrier, and here, about twelve o'clock,our driver stopped a moment at an inn to give water to his horses. Thebar-room was full of fresh-colored young men in military uniforms, talkingPennsylvania German rather rapidly and vociferously. They surrounded athick-set man, in a cap and shirt-sleeves, whom they called Tscho, orJoe, and insisted that he should give them a tune on his fiddle.

"Spiel, Tscho, spiel, spiel," was shouted on every side, and at last Tschotook the floor with a fiddle and began to play. About a dozen of the youngmen stood up on the floor, in couples, facing each other, and hammered outthe tune with their feet, giving a tread or tap on the floor to correspondwith every note of the instrument, and occasionally crossing from side toside. I have never seen dancing more diligently performed.

When the player had drawn the final squeak from his violin, we got intoour vehicle, and in somewhat more than an hour were entering the littlevillage of Nazareth, pleasantly situated among fields the autumnal verdureof which indicated their fertility. Nazareth is a Moravian village, offour or five hundred inhabitants, looking prodigiously like a little townof the old world, except that it is more neatly kept. The houses aresquare and solid, of stone or brick, built immediately on the street; apavement of broad flags runs under their windows, and between the flagsand the carriage-way is a row of trees. In the centre of the village is asquare with an arcade for a market, and a little aside from the mainstreet, in a hollow covered with bright green grass, is another square, inthe midst of which stands a large white church. Near it is an avenue, withtwo immense lime-trees growing at the gate, leading to the field in whichthey bury their dead. Looking upon this square is a large building, threeor four stories high, where a school for boys is kept, to which pupils aresent from various parts of the country, and which enjoys a very goodreputation. We entered the garden of this school, an inclosure thicklyovershadowed with tall forest and exotic trees of various kinds, withshrubs below, and winding walks and summer-houses and benches. The boys ofthe school were amusing themselves under the trees, and the arched walkswere ringing with their shrill voices.

We visited also the burying place, which is situated on a little eminence,backed with a wood, and commands a view of the village. The Moravian graveis simple in its decorations; a small flat stone, of a square shape, lyingin the midst, between the head and foot, is inscribed with the name of thedead, the time and place of his birth, and the time when, to use their ownlanguage, he "departed," and this is the sole epitaph. But innovationshave been recently made on this simplicity; a rhyming couplet or quatrainis now sometimes added, or a word in praise of the dead One recent gravewas loaded with a thick tablet of white marble, which covered it entirely,and bore an inscription as voluminous as those in the burial places ofother denominations. The graves, as in all Moravian burying grounds, arearranged in regular rows, with paths at right angles between them, andsometimes a rose-tree is planted at the head of the sleeper.

As we were leaving Nazareth, the innkeeper came to us, and asked if wewould allow a man who was travelling to Easton to take a seat in ourcarriage with the driver. We consented, and a respectable-looking,well-clad, middle-aged person, made his appearance. When we had proceededa little way, we asked him some questions, to which he made no other replythan to shake his head, and we soon found that he understood no English. Itried him with German, which brought a ready reply in the same language.He was a native of Pennsylvania, he told me, born at Snow Hill, in Lehighcounty, not very many miles from Nazareth. In turn, he asked me where Icame from, and when I bid him guess, he assigned my birthplace to Germany,which showed at least that he was not very accurately instructed in thediversities with which his mother tongue is spoken.

As we entered Easton, the yellow woods on the hills and peaks thatsurround the place, were lit up with a glowing autumnal sunset. Soonafterward we crossed the Lehigh, and took a walk along its bank in SouthEaston, where a little town has recently grown up; the sidewalks along itsdusty streets were freshly swept for Saturday night. As it began to growdark, we found ourselves strolling in front of a row of iron mills, withthe canal on one side and the Lehigh on the other. One of these was arolling mill, into which we could look from the bank where we stood, andobserve the whole process of the manufacture, which is very striking.

The whole interior of the building is lighted at night only by the mouthsof several furnaces, which are kindled to a white heat. Out of one ofthese a thick bar of iron, about six feet in length and heated to aperfect whiteness, is drawn, and one end of it presented to the cylindersof the mill, which seize it and draw it through between them, rolled outto three or four times its original size. A sooty workman grasps theopposite end of the bar with pincers as soon as it is fairly through, andreturns it again to the cylinders, which deliver it again on the oppositeside. In this way it passes backward and forward till it is rolled into anenormous length, and shoots across the black floor with a twining motionlike a serpent of fire. At last, when pressed to the proper thinness andlength, it is coiled up into a circle by the help of a machine contrivedfor the purpose, which rolls it up as a shopkeeper rolls up a ribbon.

We found a man near where we stood, begrimed by the soot of the furnaces,handling the clumsy masses of iron which bear the name of bloom. Therolling mill, he said, belonged to Rodenbough, Stewart & Co., who had veryextensive contracts for furnishing iron to the nailmakers and wiremanufacturers.

"Will they stop the mill for the new tariff?" said I.

"They will stop for nothing," replied the man. "The new tariff is a goodtariff, if people would but think so. It costs the iron-masters fifteendollars a ton to make their iron, and they sell it for forty dollars aton. If the new tariff obliges them to sell it for considerable less theywill still make money."

So revolves the cycle of opinion. Twenty years ago a Pennsylvanian whoquestioned the policy of the protective system would have been looked uponas a sort of curiosity. Now the bloomers and stable-boys begin to talkfree trade. What will they talk twenty years hence?

Letter XL.

Boston.--Lawrence.--Portland.

Portland, _July_ 31, 1847.

I left Boston for this place, a few days since, by one of the railways. Inever come to Boston or go out of it without being agreeably struck withthe civility and respectable appearance of the hackney-coachmen, theporters, and others for whose services the traveller has occasion. Youfeel, generally, in your intercourse with these persons that you aredealing with men who have a character to maintain.

There is a sober substantial look about the dwellings of Boston, whichpleases me more than the gayer aspect of our own city. In New York we arecareful to keep the outside of our houses fresh with paint, a practicewhich does not exist here, and which I suppose we inherited from theHollanders, who learned it I know not where--could it have been from theChinese? The country houses of Holland, along the canals, are bright withpaint, often of several different colors, and are as gay as pagodas. Intheir moist climate, where mould and moss so speedily gather, thepractice may be founded in better reasons than it is with us.

"Boston," said a friend to whom I spoke of the appearance of comfort andthrift in that city, "is a much more crowded place than you imagine, andwhere people are crowded there can not be comfort. In many of theneighborhoods, back of those houses which present so respectable anaspect, are buildings rising close to each other, inhabited by the poorerclass, whose families are huddled together without sufficient space andair, and here it is that Boston poverty hides itself. You are morefortunate on your island, that your population can extend itselfhorizontally, instead of heaping itself up, as we have begun to do here."

The first place which we could call pleasant after leaving Boston wasAndover, where Stuart and Woods, now venerable with years, instruct theyoung orthodox ministers and missionaries of New England. It is prettilysituated among green declivities. A little beyond, at North Andover, wecame in sight of the roofs and spires of the new city of Lawrence, whichalready begin to show proudly on the sandy and sterile banks of theMerrimac, a rapid and shallow river. A year ago last February, thebuilding of the city was begun; it has now five or six thousandinhabitants, and new colonists are daily thronging in. Brick kilns aresmoking all over the country to supply materials for the walls of thedwellings. The place, I was told, astonishes visitors with its bustle andconfusion. The streets are encumbered with heaps of fresh earth, andpiles of stone, brick, beams, and boards, and people can with difficultyhear each other speak, for the constant thundering of hammers, and theshouts of cartmen and wagoners urging their oxen and horses with theirloads through the deep sand of the ways. "Before the last shower," said apassenger, "you could hardly see the city from this spot, on account ofthe cloud of dust that hung perpetually over it."

"Rome," says the old adage, "was not built in a day," but here is a citywhich, in respect of its growth, puts Rome to shame. The Romulus of thisnew city, who like the Latian of old, gives his name to the community ofwhich he is the founder, is Mr. Abbot Lawrence, of Boston, a richmanufacturer, money-making and munificent, and more fortunate in buildingcities and endowing schools, than in foretelling political events. He isthe modern Amphion, to the sound of whose music, the pleasant chink ofdollars gathered in many a goodly dividend, all the stones which form thefoundation of this Thebes dance into their places,

"And half the mountain rolls into a wall."

Beyond Lawrence, in the state of New Hampshire, the train stopped a momentat Exeter, which those who delight in such comparisons might call the Etonof New England. It is celebrated for its academy, where Bancroft, Everett,and I know not how many more of the New England scholars and men ofletters, received the first rudiments of their education. It lies in agentle depression of the surface of the country, not deep enough to becalled a valley, on the banks of a little stream, and has a pleasantretired aspect. At Durham, some ten miles further on, we found a longtrain of freight-cars crowded with the children of a Sunday-school, justready to set out on a pic-nic party, the boys shouting, and the girls, ofwhom the number was prodigious, showing us their smiling faces. A fewmiddle-aged men, and a still greater number of matrons, were dispersedamong them to keep them in order. At Dover, where are several cottonmills, we saw a similar train, with a still larger crowd, and when wecrossed the boundary of New Hampshire and entered South Berwick in Maine,we passed through a solitary forest of oaks, where long tables and bencheshad been erected for their reception, and the birds were twittering in thebranches over them.

At length the sight of numerous groups gathering blue-berries, in anextensive tract of shrubby pasture, indicated that we were approaching atown, and in a few minutes we had arrived at Portland. The conductor, whomwe found intelligent and communicative, recommended that we should takequarters, during our stay, at a place called the Veranda, or Oak Grove, onthe water, about two miles from the town, and we followed his advice. Wedrove through Portland, which is nobly situated on an eminence overlookingCasco Bay, its maze of channels, and almost innumerable islands, withtheir green slopes, cultivated fields, and rocky shores. We passed onearm of the sea after another on bridges, and at length found ourselves ona fine bold promontory, between Presumpscot river and the waters of CascoBay. Here a house of entertainment has just been opened--the beginning ofa new watering-place, which I am sure will become a favorite one in thehot months of our summers. The surrounding country is so intersected withstraits, that, let the wind come from what quarter it may, it breathescool over the waters; and the tide, rising twelve feet, can not ebb andflow without pushing forward the air and drawing it back again, and thuscausing a motion of the atmosphere in the stillest weather.

We passed twenty-four hours in this pleasant retreat, among the oaks ofits grove, and along its rocky shores, enjoying the agreeable coolness ofthe fresh and bracing atmosphere. To tell the truth we have found it quitecool enough ever since we reached Boston, five days ago; sometimes, infact, a little too cool for the thin garments we are accustomed to wear atthis season. Returning to Portland, we took passage in the steamerHuntress, for Augusta, up the Kennebeck. I thought to give you, in thisletter, an amount of this part of my journey, but I find I must reserve itfor my next.

Letter XLI.

The Kennebeck.

Keene, New Hampshire, _August 11, 1847_.

We left Portland early in the afternoon, on board the steamer Huntress,and swept out of the harbor, among the numerous green islands which herebreak the swell of the Atlantic, and keep the water almost as smooth asthat of the Hudson. "It is said," remarked a passenger, "that there are asmany of these islands as there are days in the year, but I do not knowthat any body has ever counted them." Two of the loftiest, rock-bound,with verdant summits, and standing out beyond the rest, overlooking themain ocean, bore light-houses, and near these we entered the mouth of theKennebeck, which here comes into the sea between banks of massive rock.

At the mouth of the river were forests of stakes, for the support of thenets in which salmon, shad, and alewives are taken. The shad fishery, theytold me, was not yet over, though the month of August was already come. Wepassed some small villages where we saw the keels of large unfinishedvessels lying high upon the stocks; at Bath, one of the most considerableof these places, but a small village still, were five or six, on whichthe ship-builders were busy. These, I was told, when once launched wouldnever be seen again in the place where they were built, but would conveymerchandise between the great ports of the world.

"The activity of ship-building in the state of Maine," said a gentlemanwhom I afterward met, "is at this moment far greater than you can form anyidea of, without travelling along our coast. In solitary places where astream or creek large enough to float a ship is found, our builders laythe keels of their vessels. It is not necessary that the channel should bewide enough for the ship to turn round; it is enough if it will containher lengthwise. They choose a bend in the river from which they can launchher with her head down stream, and, aided by the tide, float her out tosea, after which she proceeds to Boston or New York, or some other of ourlarge seaports to do her part in carrying on the commerce of the world."

I learned that the ship-builders of Maine purchase large tracts of forestin Virginia and other states of the south, for their supply of timber.They obtain their oaks from the Virginia shore, their hard pine from NorthCarolina; the coverings of the deck and the smaller timbers of the largevessels are furnished by Maine. They take to the south cargoes of lime andother products of Maine, and bring back the huge trunks produced in thatregion. The larger trees on the banks of the navigable rivers of Mainewere long ago wrought into the keels of vessels.

It was not far from Bath, and a considerable distance from the open sea,that we saw a large seal on a rock in the river. He turned his head slowlyfrom side to side as we passed, without allowing himself to be disturbedby the noise we made, and kept his place as long as the eye coulddistinguish him. The presence of an animal always associated in theimagination with uninhabited coasts of the ocean, made us feel that wewere advancing into a thinly or at least a newly peopled country.

Above Bath, the channel of the Kennebeck widens into what is calledMerrymeeting Bay. Here the great Androscoggin brings in its waters fromthe southwest, and various other small streams from different quartersenter the bay, making it a kind of Congress of Rivers. It is full ofwooded islands and rocky promontories projecting into the water andovershading it with their trees. As we passed up we saw, from time totime, farms pleasantly situated on the islands or the borders of theriver, where a soil more genial or more easily tilled had tempted thesettler to fix himself. At length we approached Gardiner, a flourishingvillage, beautifully situated among the hills on the right bank of theKennebeck. All traces of sterility had already disappeared from thecountry; the shores of the river were no longer rock-bound, but disposedin green terraces, with woody eminences behind them. Leaving Gardinerbehind us, we went on to Hallowell, a village bearing similar marks ofprosperity, where we landed, and were taken in carriages to Augusta, theseat of government, three or four miles beyond.

Augusta is a pretty village, seated on green and apparently fertileeminences that overlook the Kennebeck, and itself overlooked by stillhigher summits, covered with woods, The houses are neat, and shaded withtrees, as is the case with all New England villages in the agriculturaldistricts. I found the Legislature in session; the Senate, a small quietbody, deliberating for aught I could see, with as much grave and tranquildignity as the Senate of the United States. The House of Representativeswas just at the moment occupied by some railway question, which I was toldexcited more feeling than any subject that had been debated in the wholesession, but even this occasioned no unseemly agitation; the surface wasgently rippled, nothing more.

While at Augusta, we crossed the river and visited the Insane Asylum, astate institution, lying on the pleasant declivities of the oppositeshore. It is a handsome stone building. One of the medical attendantsaccompanied us over a part of the building, and showed us some of thewards in which there were then scarcely any patients, and which appearedto be in excellent order, with the best arrangements for the comfort ofthe inmates, and a scrupulous attention to cleanliness. When we expresseda desire to see the patients, and to learn something of the manner inwhich they were treated, he replied, "We do not make a show of ourpatients; we only show the building." Our visit was, of course, soondispatched. We learned afterward that this was either insolence orlaziness on the part of the officer in question, whose business itproperly was to satisfy any reasonable curiosity expressed by visitors.

It had been our intention to cross the country from Augusta directly tothe White Hills in New Hampshire, and we took seats in the stage-coachwith that view. Back of Augusta the country swells into hills ofconsiderable height with deep hollows between, in which lie a multitude oflakes. We passed several of these, beautifully embosomed among woods,meadows, and pastures, and were told that if we continued on the course wehad taken we should scarcely ever find ourselves without some sheet ofwater in sight till we arrived at Fryeburg on the boundary between Maineand New Hampshire. One of them, in the township of Winthrop, struck us asparticularly beautiful. Its shores are clean and bold, with littlepromontories running far into the water, and several small islands.

At Winthrop we found that the coach in which we set out would proceed toPortland, and that if we intended to go on to Fryeburg, we must take seatsin a shabby wagon, without the least protection for our baggage. It wasalready beginning to rain, and this circumstance decided us; we remainedin the coach and proceeded on our return to Portland. I have scarcely evertravelled in a country which presented a finer appearance of agriculturalthrift and prosperity than the portions of the counties of Kennebeck andCumberland, through which our road carried us. The dwellings are large,neatly painted, surrounded with fruit-trees and shrubs, and the farms inexcellent order, and apparently productive. We descended at length intothe low country, crossed the Androscoggin to the county of York, where, aswe proceeded, the country became more sandy and sterile, and the houseshad a neglected aspect. At length, after a journey of fifty or sixty milesin the rain, we were again set down in the pleasant town of Portland.

Letter XLII.

The White Mountains.

Springfield, Mass., _August_ 13, 1847.

I had not space in my last letter, which was written from Keene, in NewHampshire, to speak of a visit I had just made to the White Mountains. Donot think I am going to bore you with a set description of my journey andascent of Mount Washington; a few notes of the excursion may possiblyamuse you.

From Conway, where the stage-coach sets you down for the night, in sightof the summits of the mountains, the road to the Old Notch is a verypicturesque one. You follow the path of the Saco along a wide valley,sometimes in the woods that overhang its bank, and sometimes on the edgeof rich grassy meadows, till at length, as you leave behind you one summitafter another, you find yourself in a little plain, apparently inclosed onevery side by mountains.

Further on you enter the deep gorge which leads gradually upward to theNotch. In the midst of it is situated the Willey House, near which theWilley family were overtaken by an avalanche and perished as they weremaking their escape. It is now enlarged into a house of accommodation forvisitors to the mountains. Nothing can exceed the aspect of desolationpresented by the lofty mountain-ridges which rise on each side. They arestreaked with the paths of landslides, occurring at different periods,which have left the rocky ribs of the mountains bare from their bald topsto the forests at their feet, and have filled the sides of the valley withheaps of earth, gravel, stones, and trunks of trees.

From the Willey house you ascend, for about two miles, a declivity, by nomeans steep, with these dark ridges frowning over you, your path here andthere crossed by streams which have made for themselves passages in thegranite sides of the mountains like narrow staircases, down which theycome tumbling from one vast block to another. I afterward madeacquaintance with two of these, and followed them upward from one clearpool and one white cascade to another till I was tired. The road at lengthpasses through what may be compared to a natural gateway, a narrow chasmbetween tall cliffs, and through which the Saco, now a mere brook, findsits way. You find yourself in a green opening, looking like the bottom ofa drained lake with mountain summits around you. Here is one of the housesof accommodation from which you ascend Mount Washington.

If you should ever think of ascending Mount Washington, do not allow anyof the hotel-keepers to cheat you in regard to the distance. It is aboutten miles from either the hotels to the summit, and very little less fromany of them. They keep a set of worn-out horses, which they hire for theseason, and which are trained to climb the mountain, in a walk, by theworst bridle-paths in the world. The poor hacks are generally tolerablysure-footed, but there are exceptions to this. Guides are sent with thevisitors, who generally go on foot, strong-legged men, carrying longstaves, and watching the ladies lest any accident should occur; some ofthese, especially those from the house in the Notch, commonly called TomCrawford's, are unmannerly fellows enough.

The scenery of these mountains has not been sufficiently praised. But forthe glaciers, but for the peaks white with perpetual snow, it would bescarcely worth while to see Switzerland after seeing the White Mountains.The depth of the valleys, the steepness of the mountain-sides, the varietyof aspect shown by their summits, the deep gulfs of forest below, seamedwith the open courses of rivers, the vast extent of the mountain regionseen north and south of us, gleaming with many lakes, took me withsurprise and astonishment. Imagine the forests to be shorn from half thebroad declivities--imagine scattered habitations on the thick green turfand footpaths leading from one to the other, and herds and flocksbrowzing, and you have Switzerland before you. I admit, however, thatthese accessories add to the variety and interest of the landscape, andperhaps heighten the idea of its vastness.

I have been told, however, that the White Mountains in autumn present anaspect more glorious than even the splendors of the perpetual ice of theAlps. All this mighty multitude of mountains, rising from valleys filledwith dense forests, have then put on their hues of gold and scarlet, and,seen more distinctly on account of their brightness of color, seem totower higher in the clear blue of the sky. At that season of the year theyare little visited, and only awaken the wonder of the occasionaltraveller.

It is not necessary to ascend Mount Washington, to enjoy the finest views.Some of the lower peaks offer grander though not so extensive ones; theheight of the main summit seems to diminish the size of the objects beheldfrom it. The sense of solitude and immensity is however most strongly felton that great cone, overlooking all the rest, and formed of loose rocks,which seem as if broken into fragments by the power which upheaved theseridges from the depths of the earth below. At some distance on thenorthern side of one of the summits, I saw a large snow-drift lying in theAugust sunshine.

The Franconia Notch, which we afterwards visited, is almost as remarkablefor the two beautiful little lakes within it, as for the savage grandeurof the mountain-walls between which it passes. At this place I was shown ahen clucking over a brood of young puppies. They were littered near thenest where she was sitting, when she immediately abandoned her eggs andadopted them as her offspring. She had a battle with the mother, andproved victorious; after which, however, a compromise took place, the slutnursing the puppies and the hen covering them as well as she could withher wings. She was strutting among them when I saw her, with an appearanceof pride at having produced so gigantic a brood.

From Franconia we proceeded to Bath, on or near the Connecticut, andentered the lovely valley of that river, which is as beautiful in NewHampshire, as in any part of its course. Hanover, the seat of DartmouthCollege, is a pleasant spot, but the traveller will find there the worsthotels on the river. Windsor, on the Vermont side, is a still finervillage, with trim gardens and streets shaded by old trees; Bellows Fallsis one of the most striking places for its scenery in all New England. Thecoach brought us to the railway station in the pleasant village ofGreenfield. We took seats in the train, and leaving on our left the quietold streets of Deerfield under their ancient trees, and passing a dozen ormore of the villages on the meadows of the Connecticut, found ourselves inless than two hours in this flourishing place, which is rapidly rising tobe one of the most important towns in New England.

Letter XLIII.

A Passage to Savannah.

Augusta, Georgia, _March 29, 1849_.

A quiet passage by sea from New York to Savannah would seem to affordlittle matter for a letter, yet those who take the trouble to read what Iam about to write, will, I hope, admit that there are some things to beobserved, even on such a voyage. It was indeed a remarkably quiet one, andworthy of note on that account, if on no other. We had a quiet vessel,quiet weather, a quiet, good-natured captain, a quiet crew, and remarkablyquiet passengers.

When we left the wharf at New York last week, in the good steamshipTennessee, we were not conscious, at first, as we sat in the cabin, thatshe was in motion and proceeding down the harbor. There was no beating orchurning of the sea, no struggling to get forward; her paddles played inthe water as smoothly as those of a terrapin, without jar or noise. TheTennessee is one of the tightest and strongest boats that navigate ourcoast; the very flooring of her deck is composed of timbers instead ofplanks, and helps to keep her massive frame more compactly and solidlytogether. It was her first voyage; her fifty-one passengers lolled onsofas fresh from the upholsterer's, and slept on mattresses which hadnever been pressed by the human form before, in state-rooms where foul airhad never collected. Nor is it possible that the air should become impurein them to any great degree, for the Tennessee is the best-ventilated shipI ever was in; the main cabin and the state-rooms are connected with eachother and with the deck, by numerous openings and pipes which keep up aconstant circulation of air in every part.

I have spoken of the passengers as remarkably quiet persons. Several ofthem, I believe, never spoke during the passage, at least so it seemed tome. The silence would have been almost irksome, but for two lively littlegirls who amused us by their prattle, and two young women, apparently justmarried, too happy to do any thing but laugh, even when suffering fromseasickness, and whom we now and then heard shouting and squealing fromtheir state-rooms. There were two dark-haired, long-limbed gentlemen, wholay the greater part of the first and second day at full length on thesofas in the after-cabin, each with a spittoon before him, chewing tobaccowith great rapidity and industry, and apparently absorbed in the endeavorto fill it within a given time. There was another, with that atrabiliouscomplexion peculiar to marshy countries, and circles of a still deeper hueabout his eyes, who sat on deck, speechless and motionless, whollyindifferent to the sound of the dinner-bell, his countenance fixed in anexpression which seemed to indicate an utter disgust of life.

Yet we had some snatches of good talk on the voyage. A robust oldgentleman, a native of Norwalk, in Connecticut, told us that he had beenreading a history of that place by the Rev. Mr. Hall.

"I find," said he, "that in his account of the remarkable people ofNorwalk, he has omitted to speak of two of the most remarkable, twospinsters, Sarah and Phebe Comstock, relatives of mine and friends of myyouth, of whom I retain a vivid recollection. They were in opulentcircumstances for the neighborhood in which they lived, possessing a farmof about two hundred acres; they were industrious, frugal, and extremelycharitable; but they never relieved a poor family without visiting it, andinquiring carefully into its circumstances. Sarah was the housekeeper, andPhebe the farmer. Phebe knew nothing of kitchen matters, but she knew atwhat time of the year greensward should be broken up, and corn planted,and potatoes dug. She dropped Indian corn and sowed English grain with herown hands. In the time of planting or of harvest, it was Sarah who visitedand relieved the poor.

"I remember that they had various ways of employing the young people whocalled upon them. If it was late in the autumn, there was a chopping-boardand chopping-knife ready, with the feet of neat-cattle, from which theoily parts had been extracted by boiling. 'You do not want to be idle,'they would say, 'chop this meat, and you shall have your share of themince-pies that we are going to make.' At other times a supply of oldwoollen stockings were ready for unraveling. 'We know you do not care tobe idle' they would say, 'here are some stockings which you would obligeus by unraveling.' If you asked what use they made of the spools ofwoollen thread obtained by this process, they would answer: 'We use it asthe weft of the linsey-woolsey with which we clothe our negroes.' They hadnegro slaves in those times, and old Tone, a faithful black servant oftheirs, who has seen more than a hundred years, is alive yet.

"They practiced one very peculiar piece of economy. The white hickory youknow, yields the purest and sweetest of saccharine juices. They had theirhickory fuel cut into short billets, which before placing on the fire theylaid on the andirons, a little in front of the blaze, so as to subject itto a pretty strong heat. This caused the syrup in the wood to drop fromeach end of the billet, where it was caught in a cup, and in this way agallon or two was collected in the course of a fortnight. With this theyflavored their finest cakes.

"They died about thirty years since, one at the age of eighty-nine, andthe other at the age of ninety. On the tomb-stone of one of them, it wasrecorded that she had been a member of the church for seventy years. Theirfather was a remarkable man in his way. He was a rich man in his time, andkept a park of deer, one of the last known in Connecticut, for the purposeof supplying his table with venison. He prided himself on the strict andliteral fulfillment of his word. On one occasion he had a law-suit withone of his neighbors, before a justice of the peace, in which he was castand ordered to pay ten shillings damages, and a shilling as the fees ofcourt. He paid the ten shillings, and asked the justice whether he wouldallow him to pay the remaining shilling when he next passed his door. Themagistrate readily consented, but from that time old Comstock never wentby his house. Whenever he had occasion to go to church, or to any otherplace, the direct road to which led by the justice's door, he was carefulto take a lane which passed behind the dwelling, and at some distance fromit. The shilling remained unpaid up to the day of his death, and it wasfound that in his last will he had directed that his corpse should becarried by that lane to the place of interment."

When we left the quarantine ground on Thursday morning, after lying mooredall night with a heavy rain beating on the deck, the sky was beginning toclear with a strong northwest wind and the decks were slippery with ice.When the sun rose it threw a cold white light upon the waters, and thepassengers who appeared on deck were muffled to the eyes. As we proceededsouthwardly, the temperature grew milder, and the day closed with a calmand pleasant sunset. The next day the weather was still milder, untilabout noon, when we arrived off Cape Hatteras a strong wind set in fromthe northeast, clouds gathered with a showery aspect, and every thingseemed to betoken an impending storm. At this moment the captain shiftedthe direction of the voyage, from south to southwest; we ran before thewind leaving the storm, if there was any, behind us, and the day closedwith another quiet and brilliant sunset.

The next day, the third of our voyage, broke upon us like a day in summer,with amber-colored sunshine and the blandest breezes that ever blew. Anawning was stretched over the deck to protect us from the beams of thesun, and all the passengers gathered under it; the two dark-complexionedgentlemen left the task of filling the spittoons below, and came up tochew their tobacco on deck; the atrabilious passenger was seen to interesthimself in the direction of the compass, and once was thought to smile,and the hale old gentleman repeated the history of his Norwalk relatives.On the fourth morning we landed at Savannah. It was delightful to eyeswhich had seen only russet fields and leafless trees for months, to gazeon the new and delicate green of the trees and the herbage. The weepingwillows drooped in full leaf, the later oaks were putting forth their newfoliage, the locust-trees had hung out their tender sprays and theirclusters of blossoms not yet unfolded, the Chinese wistaria covered thesides of houses with its festoons of blue blossoms, and roses were noddingat us in the wind, from the tops of the brick walls which surround thegardens.

Yet winter had been here, I saw. The orange-trees which, since the greatfrost seven or eight years ago, had sprung from the ground and grown tothe height of fifteen or twenty feet, had a few days before my arrivalfelt another severe frost, and stood covered with sere dry leaves in thegardens, some of them yet covered with fruit. The trees were not killed,however, as formerly, though they will produce no fruit this season, andnew leaf-buds were beginning to sprout on their boughs. The dwarf-orange,a hardier tree, had escaped entirely, and its blossoms were beginning toopen.

I visited Bonaventure, which I formerly described in one of my letters. Ithas lost the interest of utter solitude and desertion which it then had. AGothic cottage has been built on the place, and the avenues of live-oakshave been surrounded with an inclosure, for the purpose of making acemetery on the spot. Yet there they stand, as solemn as ever, lifting andstretching their long irregular branches overhead, hung with masses andfestoons of gray moss. It almost seemed, when I looked up to them, as ifthe clouds had come nearer to the earth than is their wont, and formedthemselves into the shadowy ribs of the vault above me. The drive toBonaventure at this season of the year is very beautiful, though the roadsare sandy; it is partly along an avenue of tall trees, and partly throughthe woods, where the dog-wood and azalea and thorn-trees are in blossom,and the ground is sprinkled with flowers. Here and there are dwellingsbeside the road. "They are unsafe the greater part of the year," said thegentleman who drove me out, and who spoke from professional knowledge, "asummer residence in them is sure to bring dangerous fevers." Savannah is ahealthy city, but it is like Rome, imprisoned by malaria.

The city of Savannah, since I saw it six years ago, has enlargedconsiderably, and the additions made to it increase its beauty. Thestreets have been extended on the south side, on the same plan as those ofthe rest of the city, with small parks at short distances from each other,planted with trees; and the new houses are handsome and well-built. Thecommunications opened with the interior by long lines of railway have, nodoubt, been the principal occasion of this prosperity. These and theSavannah river send enormous quantities of cotton to the Savannah market.One should see, with the bodily eye, the multitude of bales of thiscommodity accumulating in the warehouses and elsewhere, in order to forman idea of the extent to which it is produced in the southern states--longtrains of cars heaped with bales, steamer after steamer loaded high withbales coming down the rivers, acres of bales on the wharves, acres ofbales at the railway stations--one should see all this, and then carry histhoughts to the millions of the civilized world who are clothed by thisgreat staple of our country.

I came to this place by steamer to Charleston and then by railway. Theline of the railway, one hundred and thirty-seven miles in length, passesthrough the most unproductive district of South Carolina. It is in factnothing but a waste of forest, with here and there an open field, half adozen glimpses of plantations, and about as many villages, none of whichare considerable, and some of which consist of not more than half a dozenhouses. Aiken, however, sixteen miles before you reach the Savannah river,has a pleasant aspect. It is situated on a comparatively high tract ofcountry, sandy and barren, but healthy, and hither the planters resort inthe hot months from their homes in the less salubrious districts. Prettycottages stand dispersed among the oaks and pines, and immediately west ofthe place the country descends in pleasant undulations towards the valleyof the Savannah.

The appearance of Augusta struck me very agreeably as I reached it, on amost delightful afternoon, which seemed to me more like June than March. Iwas delighted to see turf again, regular greensward of sweet grasses andclover, such as you see in May in the northern states, and do not meet onthe coast in the southern states. The city lies on a broad rich plain onthe Savannah river, with woody declivities to the north and west. I haveseen several things here since my arrival which interested me much, and ifI can command time I will speak of them in another letter.

Letter XLIV.

Southern Cotton Mills.

Barnwell District, South Carolina, _March_ 31, 1849.

I promised to say something more of Augusta if I had time before departingfrom Cuba, and I find that I have a few moments to spare for a hastyletter.

The people of Augusta boast of the beauty of their place, and not withoutsome reason. The streets are broad, and in some parts overshadowed withrows of fine trees. The banks of the river on which it stands are high andfirm, and slopes half covered with forest, of a pleasant aspect, overlookit from the west and from the Carolina side. To the south stretches abroad champaign country, on which are some of the finest plantations ofGeorgia. I visited one of these, consisting of ten thousand acres, keptthroughout in as perfect order as a small farm at the north, though largeenough for a German principality.

But what interested me most, was a visit to a cotton mill in theneighborhood,--a sample of a class of manufacturing establishments, wherethe poor white people of this state and of South Carolina find occupation.It is a large manufactory, and the machinery is in as perfect order as inany of the mills at the north. "Here," said a gentleman who accompaniedus, as we entered the long apartment in the second story, "you will see asample of the brunettes of the piny woods."

The girls of various ages, who are employed at the spindles, had, for themost part, a sallow, sickly complexion, and in many of their faces, Iremarked that look of mingled distrust and dejection which oftenaccompanies the condition of extreme, hopeless poverty. "These poor